About 15 years ago, I came across a small program that allowed you to put in rules for name generation. I believe the program would have been no more than a couple years old at that point.

It allowed you to give various letter combinations that were valid for the start, middle, and end of a name. There were no meanings or definitions behind the names, it just generated a list of names using the "grammar" rules.

The "grammar" rules were saved as text files. When running the program, you would select the rules and how many names you wished to be generated.

The program was a simple Windows app (no install required) and available freely for download. I believe it included several example rule files for standard fantasy races. I believe it may have also included files for races from Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed.

Can anyone identify this application?


I think you’re thinking of LangMaker, a free stand-alone Windows program from the early 2000s by Jeffrey Henning. The site is long gone, but there is an archive in the Wayback Machine, with a working download link: LangMaker/Win - Invent Your Own Language In Minutes .

Aside, this question reminded me of another language tool that is similar, but works by analysing piles of words for patterns and generating new ones. That one is the Language Confluxor by Chris Pound on Chris Pound's Name Generation Page. It might also be worth a look, though I’m sure it’s not the one you’re thinking of since it works differently and it’s Python scripts rather than a Windows program.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I'll check this out when I can. Is this for a full language? Or for names only? I seem to remember it just being for names, but that could have been just a single module. \$\endgroup\$ – Michael Richardson May 6 '19 at 21:18
  • \$\begingroup\$ @MichaelRichardson This might not be the tool! Check it out and if it doesn’t match, that’s good to know, and that narrows it down for others’ memories to be more helpful. \$\endgroup\$ – SevenSidedDie May 7 '19 at 1:00
  • \$\begingroup\$ Abulafia, too, can easily do this: random-generator.com/index.php?title=Main_Page \$\endgroup\$ – Tommi May 7 '19 at 5:14

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